I didn't dislike Terry Wogan, but neither was he entirely my 'cup of tea'. His death yesterday was sad but hardly justified the extensive coverage afforded by the BBC.
As with the demise of David Bowie a couple of weeks ago, the BBC and other media went overboard. The BBC made Wogan's death the main news story of the day and gave it massive coverage on every news broadcast. The story was deemed more important that David Cameron's EU discussions, the upcoming Iowa primaries in the US, the inquest into the still unexplained death of a young soldier at Deepcut barracks in 1995 and its possible implications in relation to 3 other deaths, the ZIKA epidemic, a financial crisis in Nigeria, the murder of 11 people at a party in Mexico, and much more. Indeed, the events in Nigeria and Mexico did not even merit reporting.
Terry Wogan may well have been a very nice, generous man; he was undoubtedly a good and well-liked broadcaster, but the effusive praise now heaped upon him is simply out of all proportion. This is another example of the media seeing itself as being 'the story', rather than being the reporter of stories; it sees its own as being more important than all else. The pompous, opinionated and self-indulgent hordes of television and radio presenters and regular guests need reminding that they are NOT the story.
It is time for change.
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